The Beach Boys: The Brother Years 1970-1986 - opinion?

Love You is the best album they ever made. I check out after that, although "Good Timin'" was a nice single.

 

My favourite period is Smiley Smile through Holland (but I love the earlier albums of course), you have the best ones from the Brother years, but I think you should try Holland too, and if you do that you might as well fill the gap with Carl and the Passions. (Does this mean you are missing Friends as well? That is a must have!)

That one used to be essential because there was plenty of unique material on it, most of it has since been released elsewhere, but I think there's still some tracks that are only on this one, possibly "Cool, Cool Water" (single edit), "School Day" (single mix) and "Sea Cruise" (outtake), but I'm not keeping track.

 

The Best of the Brother Years is the definitive comp for those not able or willing to purchase the entire set of LPs. My only complaint would be why they left off two incredible cuts, "Feel Flows", and "All This Is That" while including the lesser "Rock And Roll Music" "Peggy Sue" and "Come Go With Me".

 

Sunflower is one of their best, half of Surf's Up is excellent, and after that....not much going on.

 

To me, Love You is a masterpiece second only to Pet Sounds in The Beach Boys cannon.

 

Surf's Up, Sunflower, Holland and Love You are gems. CATP, a little less so. I like about half of LA and 15 BO; the other albums, I'm less keen on. The better comp is Ten Years of Harmony, although it, too, has some lesser material

 

Pet Sounds is my absolute favourite. The early albums I like the most. I have the Smile Sessions but don't like it.
From the Capitol period I left out "Smiley Smile" and "Friends".
"Sunflower" and "Surf's Up" are enough for me concerning the 70s plus the live album and the compilation.
"Keepin' the Summer Alive" and "Still Cruisin'" are my 80s albums (OK, mediocre but I like the Still Cruisin' and Kokomo singles)
"Summer in Paradise" for the 90s is terrible!

 

Surfs Up & Holland their two aesthetic albums.
15 Big Ones few good songs, prefer Love You less commercial,but more a Brian Wilson solo album.

MIU underrated, also Keeping The Summer Alive.

 

Nice to see the love for Holland!

My favorite album ever by anyone

 

Listening to this the other day on a drive and it never faded to the background. During the end of FP I thought to myself- is there really anything I like better than this?

Truly fantastic album.

 

Love seeing (and feeling) the love for The Beach Boys Love You album.

 

I have both. Got the LP set when it was first pressed. I already liked the early Brother stuff (and had Carl & The Passions because that's how I could get Pet Sounds), but the Ten Years album had a nice selection of the tracks from later years (that I was not about to buy).

 

Also includes the rare 'sea cruise' that has never been seen on a release since!

 

Sunflower is a very, very good album. It's up there with Pet Sounds as the BB album I've listened to the most. The rest, there's just an unfortunate amount of uninspiring with a couple good things mixed in. It was a group that just seemed to be making songs that didn't really add up to a consistent idea.

 

So far from this period I've only heard the Sunflower and Surfs Up albums in full - oops! Will definitely get to the rest though.

Besides that, the only Brother Years tracks I listened to were those included on the Good Vibrations: Thirty Years Of The Beach Boys box set. That's where I heard this material for the first time and loved it especially The Trader (the outro jam is probably one of my favorite things the Beach Boys ever put on record), Marcella, All This Is That (epic intro!), Had To Phone Ya, It's Over Now, The Night Was So Young, Baby Blue...

Sorry to get off topic here but what did you all think of the tracks they chose for the GV box set? Good representation and song selection for that 70-86 era or is The Brother Years the better collection for those songs?

Also what albums should one seek out next after Sunflower and Surfs Up? Many thanks in advance

 

The Brother Years material on the box set transformed me from a casual fan into a diehard Beach Boys/Brian Wilson fanatic! Mission accomplished!

 

Same @Sammy Banderas same!

 

Cheers, my brother!

Seeing as you're all in on this amazing musical journey, you can't go wrong getting the Brother Years 2-fer cds that came out around 2000. I'd go in chronological order (CATP/HOLLAND, IN CONCERT, 15 BO/LOVE YOU, etc.). Your mileage may vary as you head towards to mid-80s, but I have a feeling you'll enjoy the ride!

 

HOLLAND!

 

Sunflower, Surf's Up, Holland and Love You are tops.

Carl & the Passions is decent but too short and without a clear vision --like four different bands.

15 Big Ones is mostly good but poorly sequenced and at times mixed bad ly.

LA could have been a great soft rock album and settled for being a decent, flawed album.

I feel like the outtakes from these years are just as good or even better than some of the songs they did release. And I have a good amount of playlists utilizing those outtakes, which should have been.... I hope that any other outtakes that remain will make it to release soon.

 

Dennis hated 15 Big Ones. He felt like there was enough original material from Brian to ditch the covers. He was right. I understand that Bri was trying to ease back in, but maybe it was a bit too much too soon. He was definitely firing on all cylinders by the time of ADULT CHILD/LOVE YOU with lots of good original tunes.

The problem with the cover tunes is that they weren’t idiosyncratic enough: Brian should have gone all out in making them more personal. “Just Once In My Life” comes closest.

 

At least two of those "lesser cuts" were hits. And not bad ones at that. "Rock and Roll Music" and "Come Go With Me" might not be Great Art, but at the time they lit up the radio. For me, anyway.

My issues are with the inclusion of "Susie Cincinnati" (meh) and the disco version "Here Comes The Night" (ugh). I like that they included some rare single mixes/edits on this set, but I could live my life without the rare four-minute 7-inch single edit of the disco "Here Comes The Night" and still be happy.

 

I love the use of the ARP synth and the other Love You type keyboards on 'Just once in my life' and 'In the still of the night', if all the covers on 15BO had been like this (like the 'You've lost that loving feeling' outtake version) then the album would have been cool - sort of futuristic retro sounding.

 

You can easily make a good album of covers plus a good album of originals from the songs in the can by then. Instead of the odd, cant-make-up-it’s-Mind 15 Big Ones. Story of The Beach Boys life.

 

I think they chose all the correct tracks for Good Vibrations (I think it has a better selectiond than The Brother Years), and I am another one turned into a diehard Beach Boys fan by the box set. At the time (late-90s I guess) I was of course aware of the classic hits, but those did not interest me, I also had Pet Sounds, which I had basically only bought as an extension of "my summer of love" interest, to see what it was The Beatles were "competing" with when they made Sgt. Pepper, but what I was really interested in was what The Beach Boys "answered" with, I didn't really know about Smile in those pre-internet days. So I found that my local library had a mutilated copy of the box set, the box itself was missing (I guess the library actually got rid of that), as were the first two discs, but they had the booklet and discs three and four, so I took those home and I immediately fell in love with the third disc especially (and the start of the fourth), I was thinking why have I not heard, or even heard of, this music before and why isn't this music more well known, and I have since tried to spread the word about these later B.B. years. Also once I had been drawn in by this part of their music I started to see the earlier material (that I really only knew superficially) in a new light and came to love it all, but Smile through Holland is still my favourite part of it.

I think you should check out Holland next, and after that Love You. Do you have the earlier post-Pet Sounds albums? If not you should also go backwards, I suggest Friends first.